Email me ’till I say stop

For the past year, I’ve followed the American presidential nominations, and then the race for President. I was fascinated to see how each candidate used email (with links to viral videos, social networks, etc) to reach new audiences and engage potential voters.

And I followed the Canadian elections, both federal and municipal. This took significantly less of my time since there was significantly less email campaigning to monitor.

Since the elections, no leaders are engaging me in the important issues of the day.

No one is asking me to help them make this a better community, country or world.

I, like millions of Canadian and American voters who got into the rhythm of daily emails and political updates, felt summarily dumped when the votes were counted. (OK, Obama sent some thank you’s but he hasn’t migrated his audience to change.gov, the Federal NDP asked me for a donation to keep up the fight, and this week the Liberals sent me an email educating me about the Senate, but it didn’t give me the warm fuzzies.)

In this new media, social networking, on demand reality – there’s a new etiquette emerging. We expect contact. And that is a tremendous gift for campaigners. Anyone with an audience has opportunities.

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. With permission marketing and social media, you have a relationship with someone until they say stop (unsubscribe). Any candidate who stopped messaging their email lists after the election doesn’t get the value of the list they have built.

Again, we will be watching Obama to see what he will do with his immense email lists, his 121,000 Twitter followers and his 2 million Facebook Friends. But also I wonder what Gregor Robertson will do, or Elizabeth May. Win or lose, once you have an audience you have opportunities. Who is repositioning to re-engage and who is disappearing into the ether? What would you do? How are you engaging your list?